OREANDA-NEWS. Eni has renewed the Framework Agreement with the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) for cooperation in research, focused on the production of sustainable energy, environmental safeguard and experimentation of new technologies.

The agreement has been signed by the CEO of Eni, Paolo Scaroni, and by the President of the CNR, Luigi Nicolais, during the workshop attended also by Professor Giovanni Bignami, President of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), and Professor Peter Wadhams, of Cambridge University, holding a lecture on Climate change and the Arctic environment.

The activities envisaged by the agreement involve Eni's engineers and researchers in an extensive applied research programme on several areas of interest, including the testing of new techniques for the characterization of hydrocarbon reservoirs; environmental monitoring activity finalized to the sustainability of the production of oil and gas, eco-sustainable solutions for mobility and environmental protection; the experimentation of advanced solar energy cells.

The agreement assures the ongoing activities a framework of rules governing mutual relations and the management of intellectual property and simplifies the procedural aspects. The goal is to create a portfolio of innovative solutions on the energy and environment fields, of strategic importance for Italy and Europe as a whole.

The Eni-CNR's scientific cooperation, started since 2009, has already produced successful results in various fields.

In Eni's core business as well as in the area of non-conventional energy sources and environmental protection, innovation technology is an essential incentive for sustainable energy development, hence, central to the company's medium-to-long-term strategy. In fact, in the four year term Eni plans to spend about ˆ 1,1 billions for R&D activities. Furthermore, Eni has also developed a series of strategic alliances and scientific collaborations with universities and research centres of internationally recognised excellence. Among Eni's most prestigious partnerships, there are those with M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Stanford University. In Italy, beside CNR, Eni has also signed framework research and development agreements with the Polytechnics of Milan and Turin.